Excellent. I've been itching to try another PBP but couldn't justify starting one myself when my ideas are limited to "Trains! Maybe after the end of the world". I like the idea of trying something episodic, it was my vague idea for Blood & Lions (to put breaks of up to a few years between chapters).

Just having a name and letting players blather at you is brave. I'm sure you will come to regret that.

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BRR just likes to punish us. He does it because we are weak. --The Alcotroll

Hello all! I know Tash and I sort of know BRR. I wonder if he remembers that we played in a game together once? I myself had nearly forgotten.

I have a couple of character ideas, one in particular that I'm fond of. I'm not sure how it will fit into the setting though. The idea is to play a magic-user with the feel of a witch. Sort of a country village herbalist, but with some mystery thrown in, maybe a bit of a gypsy. I could play her by multi-classing as a sorcerer / druid (I think). But I like this, um, I guess it's a homebrew class, quite a lot:

I honestly remember very little about things I've allegedly done. Was it good? I hope it was a long time ago so I'm not that senile.

I'm wondering about some kind of archer. So, maybe ranger, or something with a bit of rogue mixed in. I don't really have a concept yet. I'm wondering about some kind of disenfranchised noble, but I'm not sure I want to be snooty. Again.

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BRR just likes to punish us. He does it because we are weak. --The Alcotroll

It was that Freeport game of Kahluah's. Remember? You played a gnome, I think it was, and I was playing an elf named Kelemyn (only my player name at the time was Elanor). And we were investigating snakemen under the city. Unfortunately, the game didn't last much longer after you joined.

Character creation... Right off the top of my head there are a couple of things I'd like to discuss.

First - I'm not familiar with Traits. I probably read about them once upon a time, but I don't remember how they work. Can someone describe them or point me to an online source that covers them in detail?

Second - I am familiar with FATE and Aspects, but it's been a while. In FATE, the point is to tell a good story, and Aspects are things about your character that you want to see come up in the story you're trying to tell. Um, right? But I'm not quite sure how to incorporate that into character creation.

I think looking at Gral's old Witchmark game would refresh my memory on Aspects some. But maybe Gral would like to go over some of it here also for everyone's benefit.

Right, aspects. For your Defining Aspect, I think you want to more or less sum up the basic nature of the character in a way that gives you the option to invoke that aspect in situations where you think your character would do well. So . . . what does that mean?

Well, it means that if you can use that aspect to justify a bonus on some roll, you'll get a free bonus to one roll per encounter. So you want to choose something descriptive, and I'm going to say specific is better than general. For example, it might seem clever to choose an aspect like "Lucky", because frankly you think you can justify that anywhere. Which, technically is true, but what we're looking for is something defining. So I'm not really going to just give you a bonus on anything because it could have been lucky. It will have to be something that applies in spirit to the concept of the aspect. So somewhere that sheer luck was of importance, for example.

So better than "Lucky" would be something that gives it some context. "Luck of the Elvish" is better, because it hints at situations where it would likely apply, and also at situations where it might be a detriment. Ideally you can take that one step further and really give some specific flavor or tie to your character: "My Elvish Luck trumps your boring skill".

The idea is really to try and provide some fodder to generate ideas where it would be cool to invoke.

me: Hmm, he's using FATE-style traits. "Horribly racist"
itches: but against which race? You can only pick one
me: whichever you play, of course
itches: ha

”

(I obviously meant aspect there rather than traits.)

Traits were little character tweaks that appeared from one of the books of variant rules, they gave a specific tiny advantage and drawback in an effort to help people define their characters. The full details are here.

Oh, Gral beat me to the punch. Fine.

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BRR just likes to punish us. He does it because we are weak. --The Alcotroll

That's one idea - that you've all been seeking the Inn and the initial scene takes place after you've all found it. The other is that you meet while all searching for it. I lean toward the second idea, so I'm sort of thinking that maybe a couple of you have some tie to one another (and so comprise a group that is searching) and then we pick up the other folks on the way.

Well there is room for everything - except gnomes, of course. I hate gnomes. If you want a certain background or whatever then we can make up a place that fits. Or rather, make up what you want and we'll work it in.

I actually had an idea for a forest gnome druid. But now you ruined the fun. *shniffle*

I had another idea for a survivalist mercenary type whose entire life has been this or that war (just because we're fairly low level doesn't mean he cannot have participated in a couple wars and plenty of skirmishes/battles...) with no way to go back to a normal life (or simply not knowing a way how to).

Hm.

On character creation:
Could we use a condensed skill list? Pretty please? (despite the FATE rules which I don't quite understand yet...)
Looking good otherwise.

Edit: Any more thoughts on the nature of the Inn? Or some kind of guideline why our characters would search for it? Or whether or not we start out together or meet up and then... all the usual stuff? Yeah, any idea on how you want to get this going (I know it might be a bit early to ask this)

Well . . . I don't really want to use the condensed skill list because it's kind of a pain. I figured the bonus skills for the Aspect would sort of cover that.

The FATE stuff is very simple. You come up with some phrase to describe your character - it could be a catchphrase he uses, or it could be something about his background, or it could be something about his personality or whatever. Basically, just a quick thing that sort of sums up what you perceive as the essence (or some cool part of the essence) of the character. Say your guy was "Battle Hardened but Battle Weary" or something to that effect.

Once per encounter, if some roll comes up and you can plausibly justify how it relates to your Aspect, then you get a bonus on the roll. On top of that, at character creation you get to pick two skills from any class list and they are always class skills for you and for free those two skills are always at max rank.